


Poison and Wine.

by Miss_Missing_You



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Drinking to Cope, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 21:48:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13889802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Missing_You/pseuds/Miss_Missing_You
Summary: On the surface she is questionably witty comments, daggers and bad decisions. Underneath she is sleepless nights, loud thoughts and far too much ale.  Hawke is made of broken hearts and a bright smile holding it all together.  Somehow she stays together but someone has all the power needed to shatter her.  Unbeknown to either of them he's halfway to doing it.Or the one in which Hawke is slowly falling apart and no one will put her back together





	Poison and Wine.

Here’s the thing; she doesn’t have a drinking problem. Or suicidal tendencies. At least that’s what she tells herself, and Fenris if he’s listening, as the elf helps her inebriated ass home. The warrior just nods, an uncharacteristically good natured action, before leaving her in Bodahn’s capable hands. For a second she watches him leave, both of him. A lump, that is definitely not longing, sits in her throat as he ducks into the darkness. As Bodahn ushers her through the house she grows quiet, solemnity is not something commonly associated with Hawke. Somehow it suits her.

*****

There’s a band of four misfits wandering the wounded coast. Two elves, a dwarf and a human, who looks suspicious like the leader. Merry isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe them, but I’m always here for clichés. The merry band of misfits makes its way through the sand dunes, conversation occasionally sprouting on the barren landscape. Hawke is playing with a small dagger, twiddling them over her fingers. It’s one of the ones she normally has tucked into her wrist or boot. Last night this one was pulled from her inner thigh by a man. His face was unmarred by Lyrium, his hands not covered in blisters from swinging a great sword. There’s memory of hands on her waist and skin on her skin. But they were the wrong hands on her waist, the wrong skin on her skin. The wrong person leaving her bed empty. Her mind is consumed by thoughts of the previous night.

In a, if Hawke did say so herself, spectacular turn of events slavers picked that day to hunt down Fenris. Now there’s anger twisting in her gut, instead of a weird cocktail of guilt and longing. She’s found a target for her, supressed, feelings. The fact that it bring Fenris one step closer to peace is a plus.

They cut their way through the ruins. Hawke can feel Fenris growing angrier with each kill. It’s in the way he grunts and the violent hum of the Lyrium in his veins. She winces as he rounds on each of them in turn. First it’s Merrill, the familiar rhetoric about the dangers of blood magic. Then Varric, the dwarf just brushes it off and Hawke chooses to too. Hawke’s turn comes when they find an elf girl cowering in a corner. Hawke directs her to her estate. She’s ready for Fenris’ hateful words but that doesn’t stop the hurt their meaning brings.

“I did not know you were in the market for a slave.” Come his low tones as the girl flees. After a breath Hawke replies,

“I gave her a job Fenris. I’m going to pay her.” She does not wait for his reply. His voice could be tinged with regret or defensiveness – any plethora of emotions in between – and she doesn’t think she can handle either. Anyway, she’ll probably get drunk and think about later.

She is angry and the way she dances through the slavers isn’t sating her. All she can think about a Fenris’ words, the fact he could think of her like that. The worst part is she let him close enough to affect her that easily. Varric’s worried gaze drills her neck, going through her like one of Bianca’s bolts. By the time they reach the final chamber her hair is matted blood and she is seething with more anger than she began the day with.

Fenris calls the woman waiting for them Hadriana. Countless nights spent learning about him have taught Hawke well. She recognises the name and hates the one who holds it. She wants the kill for herself but she knows that is not how today was meant to end.

*****

Once again Hawke is drunk. She’s sitting in Varric’s room in the Hanged Man. What is either her second or third bottle of ale – wine holds too much meaning – is three quarters done in her hand. Varric sits at his desk writing. He says it’s the next chapter of ‘Hard in Hightown’ and Hawke is too far gone to question it. It’s a dance they’ve done many times. The steps are reflexes now.

She downs the remainder of the bottle. In that final gulp the dregs burn slightly. Tossing it aside she stand ups. Darkness swirls at the edges of her vision as the blood rushes to her head.

“You’re going to pick that up,” Varric says, not looking up from the manuscript on his desk. Hawke grumbles but stumbles across the room, picks up the discarded bottle and places it on Varric’s beside table.

“I should go,” She slurs, more to herself than Varric.

The Dwarf finally looks up at this. He pushes his glasses down his nose, surveying her over the top of them. Shaking his head he tells her to stay, use his bed. Numbly Hawke nods. She leaves her boots at the end of his bed and slides under the blanket.

The beat of Varric’s quill scratching the parchment sends her to sleep quickly. Or it might be the alcohol. Her dreams are a mess. The feeling of blood on her finger tips. The recurring nightmare of Bethany’s pale face as they walked her through the deep roads, the blight creeping up her skin. The dull scrape of the Bertrand locking them in that chamber – the air slowly running out. And then that dream that haunts her the most. A burning fire making her whole body warm, but not as warm as the voice whispering her ear. Or the lithe hands brushing over her body. Lyrium sings as she moans underneath a body she doesn’t have the guts to name. As the world around her shatters she hears words she knows will never said in reality.

She awakes with a gasp. An almost familiar room swims in her groggy vision. Through her half open eyes – even the dim candlelight is too bright for her – she remembers where she is. Sitting up makes her head throb even more than it did when she was laying down. Varric isn’t in the room, but a glass of water has been left beside the bottle of Ale that she picked up last night. She downs it, her throat thanking her with every gulp. Then she pulls on her boots and leaves.

*****

The estate is empty when she returns. Without Bodahn and Sandal bustling around, or her mother worrying her way through the halls, the estate is quieter than Hawke feels comfortable with. In the silence her mind grows loud, circling constantly back to dreams and thoughts she cannot forget. As has become her habit her restlessness makes her hands itch for a fight. Anything to take her mind away from itself. She fastens her armour. Picking up her daggers she methodically fixes each to its place on her body. Two on her back. One up her left sleeve. At least four little ones – just throwing knives – around her waist. One on her inner thigh – so her dominant hand can reach it. Two in each boot. She creeps down through the house into the basement. The faint smell of blood still permeates the air. A year in her care cannot undo over a decade in the hands of slavers. Through the basement and out the passage into Darktown. It’s a routine she’s practiced hundreds of times now. No-one in Hightown wants to see her armed to the teeth walking through their streets. It encourages the idea that something might be wrong. Something usually is – they just don’t need to concern themselves with it from their comfortable beds and cobbled streets.

Anders is in his clinic. His face brightens slightly when he sees her but the sight of him fills Hawke with an awful mixture of guilt and regret. She walks past him, ignoring the thoughts of how she used him. There had been an itch, one the she couldn’t ask the one person she really wanted to scratch. Now there’s voice in the back of her mind that tells her choosing Anders had been cruel to him, herself and the person she really wanted. If he actually cared.

She exits Darktown near the docks. Isabela is standing there, arms crossed pushing up her breasts. She spares Hawke a half smile before falling in next to her. They walk in silence out of the docks, out of the city and into the wilderness of the Wounded Coast.

It’s something they do a lot. They end up in a secluded clearing. The dance they do clears Hawke’s head. It’s so natural. Being here with the dagger’s in her hand, dodging Isabela’s precise throws. The pirate’s frustrated grunts as Hawke doges yet another perfectly executed slash draws a laugh Hawke didn’t know she had. Part of Hawke thinks how much easier it would have been be with Isabela. Nothing would change really. But that’s not what she wants or needs. Something in her knows it’s not what Isabela wants or need either.

*****

In the evening Hawke feels the tiredness in her bones. Foregoing the drinks at the Hanged Man that will definitely not improve the hangover she’s still nursing, she says goodbye to Isabela at the entrance to Lowtown. Instead she goes back to the estate the same way she left it that morning. She walks through the relative quiet of Darktown, thankful to Andraste that Anders is not in her clinic when she walks past. Now is when a conversation could be had. A conversation she doesn’t want to have.

Exhaustion creeps though Hawke as she rises through the estate basement. She can hear her mother with talking to someone – maybe the elf girl she remembers adopting yesterday. Someone is making the floor above her creak. Bodahn she supposes. Hawke comes out in the main room of the mansion. Sandal waves at her and she smiles back. As she climbs goes to climb the stairs Bodahn seems to materialise behind her.

“Master Fenris is waiting for you. He is sat in the entrance way,” He says before trotting off towards Sandal.

Hawke feels the breath push out of her. She isn’t ready, not for whatever happens now. But her feet move anyway. They carry her to where Bodahn said he would be. And there sure enough is the white haired elf. His head in his hands and he seems to be deep in thought. She walks silently, years in the shadows making her footsteps light even in armour, but he looks up at her approach anyway. He rises as she gets close, stepping towards her. She listens to him speak, takes him and his explanations as they are. At this point she’s so far down this rabbit hole she’ll take anything he gives her. He goes to excuse himself. She catches him arm, feels the Lyrium in his veins light up as he pushes her against the wall.

Weakness is what it is. A weakness for him. She’ll do anything for him. Anything to feel the fire he lights in her chest and the lightning she can feel, even through the layers of clothing, where her gloved hand sits on his shoulder. This is the moment it all comes down to. Years of what, in this one moment, she has the strength to call longing, all come down to this moment. She has burned for what comes next so long and so quietly there were times when she wondered if she imagined everything. But this is real.

Fenris looks at her – something Hawke thinks she may have glimpsed before dances in her eyes. It isn’t fire blazing in her chest when he finally gives in. A sea fills her when the world breaks around her and they kiss. Waves crash inside her heart at the frantic kiss they share. Her whole body pressed against his. She can feel his hands rise to her waist, wrapping her in them. She steps away. Her eyes meet his and the fire burning between them brightens.

Her hand finds his. Everyone has retreated to their chambers in the time they have had this conversation. Together they walk through the mansion to her chambers. Once they’ve enter his shaking hands go to fastenings of her armour. Piece by piece her whole being is bared before him. Her soul is as naked as her body before him.

*****

Hawke watches, her heart breaking with every movement, as he redresses. Only moments ago he had been buried within her – energy and something more crackling in the air between them. Now the fire light dances on her naked body as he refuses to meet her eyes. Thoughts swirl through her mind, everything comes back to this being her fault. She pulls the blanket up to her, hiding herself from him. Shame ebbs through her – replacing the fire that once burned. She pushed him too far. She made him feel like he had to. She’s a terrible person.

The fire is still burning but Hawke feels freezing as Fenris tries to explain himself. Too much she’s too much. Tears sting her eyes as Fenris stumbles through. All I wanted was to be happy, it echoes through her head. Everything comes down to the fact she doesn’t do that. She doesn’t make him happy. If anything they have just broken each other more.

“Forgive me,” he says as he leaves her. Leaves her with tears burning her eyes as she realises how everything falls apart. Somethings just do it faster than others.

******

Varric is refusing to let her drink. He looks at her with sad eyes when she stumbles into his chamber swallowed tears stuck in her throat. Carefully he takes the bottle of wine she’s just purchased from her grasp. That night is the first time she cries in front of him. The first time she’s cried in a along time.

After all under all the masks Hawke is made of broken pieces stitched together with impossible dreams.


End file.
